Quotes, quotes and more quotes...

[Perry]

...like the one in my sig. I'm looking for quotes from the founding fathers(but not limited too) that will knock the socks off of people because they speak the truth to such a great extent. There was one i heard last week that Jefferson was supposed to have said about banks taking over the nation... i wish i could find it now dangit....

Anyway please fill this thread with quotes that we can add to our arsenal.


Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson

[john_anderson_ii]

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
- Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
-Thomas Jefferson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
-Thomas Jefferson


Of course, I must include some of my favorite USMC quotes, like the one in my signature. They might even be considered relevant to the battle we currently face.

""The Continental ship Providence, now lying at Boston, is bound on a short cruise, immediately; a few good men are wanted to make up her complement."
-- Cpt. William Jones 20 March 1779

"Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?"
--GySgt. Daniel J. "Dan" Daly, USMC

"Retreat Hell! We've just got here!"
--Attributed to several World War I Marine Corps officers, Belleau Wood, June 1918

[Grandson of Liberty]

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy" - James Madison

[Hope]

Not a Founding Father technically, but I'm sure he had much influence over the thinkers of the day:


When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war other, in order that the people may require a leader.

- Plato

[Copperhed51]

Not founding fathers but Eisenhower seemed to be pretty much on the ball with his quotes. Here's a couple good ones.


"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States

And there's this popular one from Nazi Germany that is usually appropriate:

''If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie...

The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.''
--Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

[sylvania]

These are some of my favorites (none is the one requested...sorry.)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford.

“Commerce will all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto” – Thomas Jefferson

"It doesn't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires to people's minds." -Samuel Adams

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead

"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai E. Stevenson

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too." - William Somerset Maugham

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." - Mark Twain

"I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute." - Mark Twain

"...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more." - Mark Twain

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain